Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky DS User Review

5.0

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky has a few pros, and it also has a dozen cons that may easily turn a buyer off; and if they don’t then you know for yourself that you are a true Pokemon worshipper.

Although the trend for the pokemon franchise has been taking patterns for development, a pokemon version starts as a stand-alone game, and then from there they make another update of it within a year or two but still maintaining the places and the characters and the features and game play. This is actually the downfall of the game, the game remains in its prehistoric state yet the main players of the game are now growing up to be teenagers and look for higher standards for a video game, and are therefore dropping pokemon from their game’s list. This tends to make me think that ChunSoft is more focused on placing add-ons to the game rather than modifying the old game and turning it into something new to attract even more players.

The feel is of course pretty much a gameboy advance, and the controls are indeed the same as the previous installments. However the Explorers of Sky also offers new features like starting off as either Riolu or Phanpy, characters that were available in the last instalment but are given the chance to play the main role for this part. Not to mention that if you are planning to aim for a specific pokemon, you do have to answer the personality quiz properly to get what you want.

The added dungeons add more places to explore and more monsters to battle. Not to mention that 5 new episodes are placed in the game to give a prequel feel to some characters inside the game. Lastly, the placement of the Wondermail S, a feature useable only for the same copy of the game, gives pokemon a more individual taste. But aside from those, there is nothing to look forward to.

Do not get me wrong; I don’t dislike the pokemon franchise, but there is a lot to improve on in the game, and most are obvious without even requiring a degree in game designing to spot them. The platform can handle more than just a gameboy graphic game, yet they just added color to it and changed nothing at all. The places are still the same as the previous franchise therefore taking away the thrill in exploring if you have played the other versions of pokemon.

The audio has changed little or even not at all. It’s been more than 10 years and pokemon has still remained the same without taking a big step forward to at least show their fans that they can take the game into higher levels. Furthermore, in this state of the pokemon game, they may fail to attract more players and only have kids as the main source of franchise.